


A Collection of Faerie Tales

by DoomBoi (Teh_FemaleMoriarty)



Category: Irish Mythology
Genre: Body Horror, Faeries - Freeform, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Other, The Gentry - Freeform, bipolar character, fae, the Fair Folk, the fae do weird things, this is generally that
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-17
Updated: 2020-01-16
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:47:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22287367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teh_FemaleMoriarty/pseuds/DoomBoi
Summary: says it on the tin, these are just stories about folks who find their way around the realm of the good people and have to deal with it. or make the good people deal with them.some of them are connected and some are just one-offs.
Kudos: 3





	1. Brennan of the Daoine Sidhe

Brennan had heard, of course, of the Tuathe De Dannan, and of the Daoine Sidhe. His grandmother had told him all the tales she knew of the Old Gods and the fair folk and the respect they deserved. She placed fresh cream made from her cows and a half-pint of whiskey on her back porch every night, despite having lived in America for half her life, and having her children there. Brennan’s father never did, and his mother didn’t want to talk about her eccentric mother-in-law. But Grandmother kept the stories alive in Brennan, even when he came out as queer, even when he was diagnosed as bipolar, even when he was in the hospital recovering from a manic attempt at suicide. She never begrudged him these things. She just told him her stories and fed him strawberries and cream when the doctors weren’t looking.

He had heard, of course, of changelings. It was his grandmother’s favorite story to tell, how the Good Folk were fond of young children as pets, servants, novelty items, or foodstuffs. She told him about how way back when, the Queen of Elphame herself had traded a child for a human one, and the human one was so sickly and wheezing -deformed, the doctor who cut it from its mother’s womb called it- that it was only by the mercy of the Good Queen that the baby lived, safe and a princess in the land of the Fair Ones. The replacement child, a little fairy boy, was left in her place, given her form, and the chance of an equally safe life. She had wanted the little girl for her laugh, and traded her own son for it. As was the nature of eternal beings, Grandmother would remind Brennan.

And yet, with all his grandmother’s tales, he never thought he would come face to face with the towering figure of the fabled Queen of Elphame.

Grandmother was dying. She had been for some time, but Brennan knew she wouldn’t make the night. His mother had tried to pry him from her bedside, told him to leave her to rest, but he couldn’t. The one person who had been there with him for all his ups and downs, the first face he saw when he woke up in the hospital from trying to swallow his father’s medicine cabinet, the first person to shove past all the doctors to give him a loud and smacking kiss when he was recovering from his top surgery, the only person who didn’t cry when he was diagnosed as bipolar. And she was going to leave him.

His mother had left him to his vigil. Grandmother was sleeping. Brennan held one of her strong, weathered hands in both of his, so fragile now while she waited to go to her reward. She looked so small amongst all the blankets she demanded to keep out the chill. “Death is coming for me, and I don’t want to feel his cold fingers when he does,” she had laughed. She seemed at peace with her death, and Brennan bowed his head over their hands, asking for some of her strength for when she left him.

And then She showed up.

“You’re so much different that I remember,” a voice like the hushed fall of rain said, and Brennan’s head snapped up to the hovering, too-thin figure of something not of this world, and only vaguely humanoid. Branches spread from its head, out and up like an odd crown, and flowers that bloomed and glowed soft and golden were wrapped around them and fell in waves over the shoulders. The face was soft, a poor mimicry of something human, terrifying and beautiful at the same time. Wide hands with long fingers, twisted and pointed and gnarled like wood, reached for him over his grandmother’s bed. “So much different than I’d imagined you’d be.”

“What are you?” Brennan breathed as the hands took his face in them and touched with the love of a parent. Its skin was rough and worn, much like Grandmother’s, but they lacked warmth. He squeezed his grandmother’s hand in his, scared for his life, but unable to move through his fear. Her hand squeezed back.

“ _ Who _ , darling boy. I believe Ailbhe told you.”

“Torment my boy no longer, My Queen,” Grandmother’s hoarse voice admonished and she used Brennan’s hands to pull herself up into a sitting position, causing the Queen to move away from Brennan. She propped herself up against the pillows and the headboard as best she could and smiled at her grandson. “Brennan, this is the very Queen of Elphame I told you about all these years. My Queen, this is the boy you left behind.”

“You may call me Una, darling boy,” she said quietly, as if she were in awe.

“The baby boy,” Brennan said, and he felt like he couldn’t breathe. “The baby changeling boy in your story. The son of the Fae Queen, who traded him for a sick little girl. Is…?”

“It’s you, Brennan,” Grandmother finished. “This is her. Come to pay your respects to a dying old woman, My Queen?”

“You’re hardly either, Ailbhe,” the Queen admonished. “I was coming to collect you.”

“I don’t understand,” Brennan said.

“Ailbhe is a selkie. Her coat is hidden somewhere here, something so obvious as to be inconspicuous. Were you going to be asked to be buried with it?” Una asked.

“Aye. I was going to let them have closure. My coat, my boy. The seal one with the fur lining, there in my closet,” Grandmother demanded, waving Brennan off to get it for her. He rose slowly, as if in a dream, and got it for her. No sooner than the sealskin touched his grandmother’s, she looked healthier, stronger than she had in years. He bet that if she put it on, she would become a beautiful young woman again, and when she closed it, there would be a seal where she once was. He was going to go into a panic, or a depressive episode, he could feel it. “Remember where you are, Brennan,” she said quietly, bringing him out of his head.

“You named him Brennan?” Una asked.

“Hardly. He named himself. That’s what happens here, when you don’t meet some of the bare specifications of exchanging children. You knew better, My Queen.”

“Do not disrespect me in this fragile form you’ve taken,” Una said, and Brennan felt like all the warmth had been sucked from the room, from his very body, at the tone of the Queen’s voice. “I can and will strike you down.”

“My apologise, My Queen,” Grandmother murmured. “I request a favor from you, My Queen.”

“Say it, and I’ll deliberate.”

“I ask for an extension of my stay on the mortal plane. Not as a crone, but in my true form, if only to guide Brennan in this new life he’s been forced into again. He’ll need guidance he cannot find elsewhere.”

“You have to come home, Ailbhe,” Una said, as if discussing the weather. “But seeing the state of my son here, in this place, I will take him home, too.”

“You can’t just keep doing this,” Brennan said, feeling the anger in his belly growing. He was doing his best not to spiral into an episode, but damned if he wasn’t dangerously close to one. Una’s cold gaze fell upon him, and he was reminded that even if she was his mother, she left him here. “Taking people against their will. Replacing them. What do you think happens when you do that?”

“Learn your place, boy,” Una warned, but rage was already boiling in Brennan’s belly.

“What place? This place you’ve left me in? To rot and fester and be hated and  _ die _ ?!” Brennan shouted. “Or the place you took me from? Did you even care that you were giving away your own flesh and blood? For the novelty of a laugh that would change? Of a girl who would waste away eventually?”

“Riannon is alive and well. Healthy and safe. I care for my own,” Una said, her voice icy. It was cold enough that any warmth still left in the room was gone, but Brennan’s blood burned hot with his anger, hot enough to keep him from buckling under the heavy weight of the Fae Queen’s gaze.

“Brennan, don’t act rashly,” Grandmother warned.

“I  _ was _ your own. And you left me here. All this time I thought that there was something wrong with me. My mother didn’t even breastfeed me until I was almost a year. She didn’t want to touch me, because she was convinced I wasn’t hers. She cared for me, sure, but it was hard. Deep down, she’s always known. And then I came out as queer, and it was like confirmation for her that I wasn’t hers. But you’ve always belonged. Gods given right and all that, but what the fuck was I supposed to do? My own mother didn’t love me. Do you have even a fraction of an idea what that’s like?!”

“Brennan-”

“Let him dig his own grave, Ailbhe,” Una silenced.

“You put me in this shitty body, and left me here!” Brennan screamed. “You left me! I… do you know what Bipolar Disorder is?! I felt like I was going insane, goddamn you!”

“I had nothing to do with that. It’s not a side effect of being transported here,” Una said.

“Does Riannon have T2B, then?!”

“Yes.”

“And you helped her?!”

“Yes, Brennan. As I could help you,” Una tried.

“And what would my parents think?! That I ran away and took my grandmother’s corpse with me?! I can’t do this to them! I already tried to kill myself because of every single shitty thing I’ve had to go through! And where were you?! Do you know what it means to actually be a mother?! The closest thing I had is Ailbhe, and she’s not even my blood!”

Brennan couldn’t stop the tears from streaming down his face, from the break in his voice as he screamed twenty years of pent up frustration and betrayal at a being who could break every bone in his body or turn him into dust with a snap of her fingers. He sank to his knees, sobbing, hands shaking as he tried to keep himself something like upright so he could look the Fae Queen dead in the eye when he told her, “You took me from my home, you’re taking the only person who ever truly loved and cared for me, you took normallacy from me, and now you want to take me. You’ve taken your pound of flesh. You don’t get to take any more. I am due repayment! As a prince of the fae, I demand a tribute!”

Ailbhe slid off her bed, carefully, and pulled Brennan to her, holding him like she had when he first came down from an episode. He clung to her like the scared child he felt like, and wept into her bedrobe. He didn’t know what else to do. He felt the presence of Una kneel behind him and place a gentle hand on his shoulder, gently pulling him away from his grandmother. When he rounded on her, he saw a woman that looked much more like him than he looked like either of his parents. She was tired, older that his parents, with laugh lines around her eyes and worry lines in her forehead, and she was crying. She carefully -so carefully, like either of them would break if they moved too fast, like he was fragile and soft- maneuvered him into her arms and held him. He let himself be held, let her cry as much as she let him, and folded himself into her arms like he’d always wanted to as a boy.

“Forgive me, my darling boy,” Una whispered through her sobs, combing her fingers through his too-long hair. “Forgive me. I… I was afraid. To see you again. I was afraid you would like it better here, than with me. Not a day goes by that I don’t miss you, that I don’t wish to have both you and Riannon for the rest of my life. And in my fear, I proved negligent. The only person I was helping in leaving you unchecked was myself. And even then, that isn’t entirely true, is it?”

“I didn’t mean to yell,” Brennan said finally, voice rough and nasally. “I never mean to yell, it just gets so loud in my head and my chest gets tight and I can’t help it. I try so hard not to just break down all the time and it fucking sucks.”

“It was understandable,” Una assured him, tucking his hair behind his ear. She pressed her cheek to his hair, rocking him occasionally, trying to get in every ounce of motherly affection she neglected him all those years, trying to convey her love and her sorrow with her gestures and movements. “I haven’t been the best to you.”

“What are we going to do now?” Ailbhe said finally.

“Give me a minute to figure it out?” Brennan said.

“Well. Ailbhe, you were dying,” Una pointed out, wiping her eyes. “Go on and do that. I am going to get Riannon. And we’ll show up tomorrow and I’ll… say I found out we switched children on accident. Close enough. Maybe they’ll let me see you more often, and it would do Riannon some good as well.”

“And what about Grandmother?” Brennan said. He’d miss her too much if she was gone from him forever.

“My wife?” Una asked.

“An honor,” Ailbhe answered as she stood up and slid back into bed. “Don’t look so glum, boy, it’ll sour your good looks.” Brennan laughed at that and helped Una to her feet, pressing a kiss to his grandmother’s wrinkled brow as she burrowed back under her mountain of blankets. Once she was back asleep, at peace in slumber again, Una pulled Brennan to her in a hug, and wrapped her arms around him tightly. She was still taller than he was, even in her human form, and tucked his head under hers.

“I’m sorry, my dearest boy,” she whispered.

“So am I. But you’re here now.”

“I am. I will be for as long as I can. And I want to hear everything while I can.”

“Promise?”

“I can’t lie,” Una promised.

Brennan let her go, back to the girl he was supposed to be, and smoothed out Ailbhe’s blankets before heading back to his own room. He could sleep easier than he would have. She would still be looking out for him, and now, he could look for her.

He slept like a baby that night.


	2. Not-Rowan

No one had been there for him, not once in his whole life. Here, in this place of new magic and ancient laws, no one would be here for him either. He wasn’t meant to be here, anyway. He snuck in through the back while running away (again) and came out from between the leaves in the forest and crept up to the massive boarding school that rested on a fairy mound. It was an accident. But accident or no, neither the members of the school who didn’t open their doors for him, nor the angry fae he disrupted would listen to him, so he ran from them both, deeper into the darkest parts of the woods where not even the fairies shouting murder at him would dare trod. That’s the thing about being a desperate fifteen year old boy who’d been bullied his whole life: he would go anywhere they wouldn’t if only to be safe for a moment.

Safe wasn’t the right word for what the darkest parts of the forest held. It wasn’t even remotely the right word. If the right word were the sun, it’s light wouldn’t reach safe for ten million years. But it was quiet, and nothing was chasing him, so for the moment, he was fine. He ran until he couldn’t breathe and stumbled deeper and deeper until he couldn’t move either. He collapsed beneath an aspen tree, and took a shaking, aching breath. On the exhale, he spotted the reason there was no birdsong around him. A creature that may have once been a deer, or maybe never was, with legs as tall as the trees (which were far taller than they should have been), and antlers that reached up like branches and spanned wider than he could imagine, stalked past him, close enough for him to smell the scent of rot and decay clinging to the animal’s not-fur.

He kept still as he could. That was another thing he learned as a desperate, bullied boy: they can smell fear, and they’re attracted to movement. So he made no noise, even when his lungs burned for a proper breath. Not until the maybe-never-deer thing crept along towards whatever gruesome destination it sought, over the horizon he could see. Only then did he gasp in two lungfuls of air, trying to still his pounding heart. He thought back to fleeting class sessions, about how deer travelled in herds, and firmly decided fuck that. He stood on shaking legs that still hurt from running, picked a direction that was neither where he came from nor where the deer-maybe-not creature was going, and began walking as fast as he dared without overexerting himself.

Along the way, he found a stick long enough to be used to help him walk, and he checked and double checked it for any potential “horseshit mcfuckery” before using it. As he walked, he noticed the sun seemed far more distant than it should, and the trees were unnaturally tall, and he figured he slipped in through another back entrance into something otherworldly, something far worse than a boarding school on a fairy mound. He walked into a grove of rowan trees after a few hours, and into a clearing, where the mouth of a cave opened into a mountain he didn’t realise existed. The cave was lined with strategically placed stones and innocuous-looking lanterns. But a desperate boy who’d learn to run from bullies knew what things really looked like when he himself really looked. This was someone’s -or maybe, more accurately, some _ thing _ ’s- home. He thought of every bedtime story he had been told, or read, remembered an old witch who ate children, remembered a wolf who swallowed a little girl whole, remembered an evil elf who stole babies for lunch. And he decided that the stick in his hand was big enough to do serious damage in his fighting hands should a witch or wolf or elf try and kill him. He needed shelter and food and water, and if the thing in the house was friendly, he would get these things. If it was not, he’d still get these things, but it would be a lot harder.

“Dawdling on porches is impolite, Lost One,” a sonorous voice called from the dark of the cave, and the boy tightened his grip on his stick. “Give me your name, at least.” He remembered tales of the fae owning names, and couldn’t help the frown on his face, the curled upset in his mouth.

“You may call me Rowan,” he said, polite as he could manage.

“And you may call me Juniper,” the voice said, amused. “Long way from home?”

“Home doesn’t exist for me.”

“Pity. But you are entirely human in a place where that can get you killed. Come inside and I will give you shelter. I doubt you’d eat anything I’d offer, but shelter is the least I can do for you. Tender and fleshy as you are.”

“Are you going to eat me?” Not-Rowan asked.

“Hardly,” Not-Juniper snorted. “You’ve got that big fuck-off stick and I never liked the taste of children. Give me a hanged man or sinnerskin any day of the week, but you little things hold no appeal to me. Too fatty for my old teeth. Come in, then,  _ Rowan _ .”

The boy stepped past the rocks and the whole cave came alight with the warmth of a cooking fire. It looked more like a home than he was expecting, with dried and drying herbs hung from the cave ceiling, preserved things and stuff in vials and bottles lined up on a long and high table against one of the walls, a bed against the other, and a writing desk at the end of the bed stacked with books and loose papers. Stirring a pot over the cooking fire was a creature from fairy tales or nightmares. It was hunched and ‘Rowan’ could count the knobs of a human-looking spine and every rib in its side, though there were far more than in a human. Its head was crowned by its own bones and spindly antlers, and while it had no eyes, its mouth was wide and turned up in the smallest of smiles at him. He bet that if it were to open its maw, there’d be countless sharp teeth, or maybe hellfire.

“You have four arms,” Not-Rowan said before his brain could catch up with his mouth, watching two of the arms maneuver ingredients into the pot while one of them cooked and the last used long and thin fingers to adjust the embers burning below in the fire. Its legs were bowed and backwards like a goat, but it only had two of those. Not-Juniper laughed through its closed mouth and wriggled the fingers of the hand that was stoking the fire in a greeting.

“That I do. You have only two of them,” it said, mouth opening only a fraction.

“Doesn’t mean I can’t hurt you with them,” Not-Rowan snapped, lowering his stick into something like a defense. Not-Juniper only laughed and waved him off, towards a chair at a low table where a basket of bread was waiting with something that could pass for butter. Not-Rowan sat on the floor near the cave mouth, instead. Not-Juniper laughed again and went back to stirring its pot.

“You’re a clever lad. You are a lad, aren’t you?” it asked.

“Yes. What are you?”

“A member of the Good Folk and an ex-member of the High Court. You seem to know a thing or two about fae rules, so I’m going to assume you know what I’m talking about. That alright, Rowan?”

“Better than I’m used to,” Not-Rowan answered honestly.

“Want some stew?”

“What’s in it?”

“Venison. Deer meat,” Not-Juniper clarified when Not-Rowan frowned deeper. Not-Rowan thought of the creature stalking the forest and decided that no, he was not going to be eating venison anytime soon, if ever at all.

“No thank you,” he said, politely. Not-Juniper laughed and ladled some stew for itself and moved to sit in one of the chairs at the low table. Not-Rowan turned to keep it in his line of sight. One of Not-Juniper’s hands held the bowl while another held the spoon. The other two went about buttering some bread and handed it to Not-Rowan.

“Take it, lad. I don’t expect anything in return. I swear it on the life of the High Queen.”

“I don’t know how cool I’d be being stuck here for the rest of my life.”

“This part of the Deep Wood is  _ my _ realm, and I’ll not hold you here against your will,” Not-Juniper explained. It gestured with the bread again. “Take it. Something to eat. I imagine the stew does not sound appealing because you saw one of the Wanderers on your way here, so the bread is gonna have to do.” Not-Rowan carefully took the bread from Not-Juniper’s spidery fingers and took the smallest of bites. The butter was richer and smoother than he expected, and flecked with some kind of smoky herb. It was good, and his stomach rumbled with hunger. Not-Juniper nodded for him to eat more, and he did, slow as to savor it and not make himself miserably sick or too full to run.

“The Wanderers are the fuck-off huge deer in those woods? The Deep Wood?” he asked.

“Yes, some of them are. The deer-ish are mostly harmless unless threatened. It’s the other Wanderers you have to be wary of. You are lucky you did not cross paths with them.”

“Why is that?”

“Lots of gorey reasons, lad. Many of them having to do with eating you, but much more having to do with truly gruesome forms of torture. Did you not smell death on the Wanderer you witnessed?” Not-Juniper asked, taking a mouthful of soup. Not-Rowan was right, there were teeth upon teeth upon teeth in that mouth. And they probably could rend child fat if Not-Juniper tried.

“Oh,” was all he could say. Not-Juniper prepared him another slice of buttered bread and handed it to him. He took it and ate half of it before asking, “Are you going to keep me as a pet or something?”

“No? I’m going to finish my supper and lead you back to the mortal realm.” Cold fear ran down Not-Rowan’s spine, like someone poured cold water down his back, and he thought of police officers who took him back to homes he’d run from on purpose, thought of cruel hands that never thought to feed him buttered bread, thought of the bruises and broken bones and how only a few were healed properly, and decided being eaten by a friendly monster was not the worst way to go.

“My name is-”

“Don’t. You’re a smart lad, you know not to do that,” Not-Juniper admonished, though not unkindly. “We already agreed I’d call you Rowan. Just because I fed you does not mean I can’t do terrible things with your name. Names are powerful in fae realms, and if someone overheard you, they could do something far worse than I could.”

“Please don’t take me back,” Not-Rowan said quietly, looking away from his host. He felt small again. He only knew how to run and how to fight when he was in immediate danger and how to cuss and scream and cut someone down with just his words, but he didn’t know how to make it stick. He didn’t know how long he could keep running and fighting until someone caught up with him and took something he could never get back. But here, he didn’t feel like he had to run or fight and that cussing and insults were a pleasing pastime.

Not-Juniper slunk down and sat as best as it could in front of the scared and desperate little boy, hands empty save for one holding another piece of bread. Two of them reached for Not-Rowan and held his face, pulled his gaze up to the eyeless and frowning face of the fae, who shook its head.

“I am no savior, Lost One,” it said. “I am not parenting material. I… I can’t help you. You don’t belong here, and being here could seriously harm you in the long run.” It wiped the quiet tears from Not-Rowan’s face and frowned deeper. “But. If you remain clever, and keep your eyes peeled, and you swear on your True Name to remain so, then I will take you to someone who  _ can _ keep you.”

“Would I be able to come back?”

“I’ll keep a back door open for you and a light on,” Not-Juniper agreed.


End file.
